Aalborg Universitet Tamara land fractal change management in between managerialist narrative and polyphonic living stories Svane, Marita Susanna; Boje, David M. Published in: Sc'Moi. Standing Conference for Management and Organizational Inquiry. Publication date: 2015 Link to publication from Aalborg University Citation for published version (APA): Svane, M. S., & Boje, D. M. (2015). Tamara land fractal change management: in between managerialist narrative and polyphonic living stories. In Sc'Moi. Standing Conference for Management and Organizational Inquiry. (2015 ed.). General rights Copyright and moral rights for the publications made accessible in the public portal are retained by the authors and/or other copyright owners and it is a condition of accessing publications that users recognise and abide by the legal requirements associated with these rights. ? 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April, 2015 Abstract Both in literature and in practice, the concepts of management, manage, and manager have been constructed in many ways, each conveying different meanings and assumptions on what manage- ment is, who a manager is, and how the manager relates to others. In this paper, we treat two domi- nant approaches to management; managerialist management and relational polyphonic managing. The short come of managerialism is its monophonic control leaving no room for multivoiced co- creativeness in local spaces. In contrast, this is the major contribution offered by polyphonic rela- tional managing. However, taking the view that leadership is understood as a social process, this latter approach is criticized for not offering enough insight into the question of how leadership is distinctive from other organizing processes (Denis, Langley & Sergi 2012). In this paper, we sug- gest antenarrative fractal change management as a third perspective in an attempt to meet this criti- cism. Furthermore, we add the criticism that neither of the two major approaches offers sufficient attention to the role that quantum spacetimemattering plays in organizational development and change. Hence, we offer a quantum storytelling framework in accordance to which we view man- agement as managing the tensed antenarrative interplay between managerialist control narrative and polyphonic, co-creative living stories. Drawing on the work on Henderson and Boje, we relate this third approach to ‘fractal change management’ (Henderson, Boje in press) and inscribes it to the Tamara storytelling organization. As a result, the contribution of the paper is a further conceptual development of Tamara Land fractal change management. Keywords: fractal change management, antenarrative, quantum, Heidegger, sociomaterial, spacet- imemattering, strategizing, organizing, inquiry, fore-caring, becoming Introduction Both in literature and in practice, the concepts of management, manage, and manager have been constructed in many ways, each conveying different meanings and assumptions on what manage- ment is, who a manager is, and how the manager relates to others. Especially since the 80’ies, how- ever, the managerialist control approach to management has permeated both the public and private sector leaving less and less space to polyphonic, relational leadership. Performance Management, 1 New Public Management, New Managerialism and Evidence-Based Management are all concepts and approaches that point into that direction. The managerialist trend often leaves the manager with the paradoxes of simultaneously dealing with control/trust, development/operation, professional quality/economic profitability, stability/change, closeness/distance, and so forth (Rennison 2014b). Today, the professional strategic manager needs to handle a much wider range of diverging ration- ales of voices (Rennison 2007: 21) and paradoxes. The multiple, contesting rationales increase the complexity of management and calls for a shift from monophonic control to polyphonic coping (Rennison 2007: 15). The tensions between monophonic control management and polyphonic cop- ing leadership pose a major challenge of contemporary management. Consequently, the semantics of the concept of management still needs scholarly attention. The challenging question of managing in between managerial, monophonic control and the polyph- ony of conflicting and competing voices can be addressed from a storytelling perspective, using Boje’s quantum triad storytelling model of control narratives, living stories and antenarratives (2014a, 2008). The managerialist control narrative implies fractal rules and patterns that control and govern the way the organizational members think, feel, relate, and behave. The polyphonic living stories co-produce little wow moments of exceptions and novelty that can be considered as fractal ruptures. Tamara-Land is very much about ‘antenarrative’ processes connecting fractal narratives with fractal story webs (Boje, 2001, 2008, 2011, in press). In this paper, we reflect upon a semantic, conceptual development of the management concept from a quantum storytelling approach applying and further developing the concept of Fractal Change Management and the quantum Tamara storytelling organization. Central to Fractal Change Man- agement is the tensed interplay between the managerialist fractal control narrative and the poly- phonic, co-creative fractal rupturing living stories as part of strategizing and organizing the future of the organization. The theoretical contribution of the article is to shed more light on quantum fractal change manage- ment and organizational development and change. As part of the conceptual development of fractal change management, we suggest that inquiring and caring is a primordial process of fractal change management. Hence, we further develop the 4-B antenarrative model by adding a fith dimension, ‘the Fore-Caring Dimension of Becoming’. Fore-caring inquiry is an inquiry into our mode of ‘be- ing-in’ in ‘being-in-the-world’. Are we in the world as imposed upon us by the fractal narrative patterns or are we in the world in an open and questioning way, fore-caring about the fractal conse- quences of the sociomaterial becoming of the world? We suggest that this dimension is in the heart of practicing fractal change management. The paper is structured in the following way. We begin the paper by briefly introducing the seman- tic roots of the concept of management and management approaches, including managerialism, di- alogism and relationalism. From a quantum storytelling perspective, we then proceed to present a criticism of these approaches as regard their contributions but also shortcomings. 2 Having done so, we unfold the quantum storytelling field as composed by fractal narratives, fractal stories and the fractal transforming antenarrative. We account for the tensed interplay between managerial fractal control narratives and polyphonic living stories of fractal ruptures. We argue that management is about addressing this tensed interplay. Therefore, we draw the attention towards the antenarrative dimension of storytelling, as the antenarrative operates as an interconnection between the fractal narratives and the fractal rupturing stories. Antenarrative management addresses the core of fractal change management in organizing, developing and changing the organization. Continuing the discussion, we add and account for the fore-caring dimension of becoming as a further devel- opment of the 4-B antenarrative model. In the end of the paper, the antenarrative model is discussed in relation to multi-fractal change man- agement and related to the quantum Tamara storytelling organization. Management Approaches: From Management to Managing Both in literature and in practice, the concepts of management and manager have been constructed in many ways, each conveying different meanings and assumptions on what management is and who a manager is. Following Cunliffe (2009), these various ways can be conceived as discourses or speech genres (Bakhtin 1986), as they draw on differently organized, ideological, and theoretical forms of talk. Used in different forms of talk, words author managerial action and identity, and assign to that ac- tion and identity authority and power over others (Cunliffe 2009: 10). In that sense, forms of talk, language and discourses on management are performative as they have consequences to managerial actions and practices, to the identity of the manager, and to the way the manager relates to others. In her literature review of the academic field of management, Cunliffe identifies four managerial approaches (2009: 29). The three of them relates to manage ment and managerialism whereas the fourth one implies the shift towards mana ging and relationalism, including critical discourses, dia- logue, and storytelling. Management and Managerialism